


Happy Ending

by JinkyO



Series: Take My Love In Really Small Doses [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, Established Relationship, Foot Massage, Hand Jobs, Injury Recovery, M/M, Massage, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Romance, Translation Available, 中文翻译 | Translation in Chinese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:12:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinkyO/pseuds/JinkyO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has a touch of the daredevil in him. Finch knows this because lately, it has become his job to provide the after-action patchup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Chinese translation by LeeDD available here: [http://www.mtslash.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=167565](http://www.mtslash.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=167565) Thank you!

New York may be the city that never sleeps but it does slow down in the middle of the night and traffic is light. Up ahead, the signal turned yellow. Harold flattened the accelerator, rocketing the sedan through the intersection.

“Mr. Reese, I'm tracking your phone now. Can you make it to the northeast exit?” He could hear Reese's labored breathing on the other end of the earpiece. An indistinct thud followed immediately by a rasped, _Fuck!_

“Mr. Reese?”

“I'm almost there, Finch.”

“Detectives Carter and Fusco are en route and I'm less than five minutes away.” Finch's earpiece exploded with the echo of gunfire in reply. “Get to the loading dock.”

Finch nosed the black sedan into the turn lane, disregarding the loud horn of the taxi he cut off. There was a spat of gunshots and then his earpiece went silent. He pushed the car to 75 miles per hour, careening through the turn onto Southern. Green light after green light, in succession, as he sped to the warehouse.

“John? What's happening?”

“Nothing. I'm okay. But I'm going to need a ride home.”

“I'm almost there.”

“I know. I can hear the tires squealing. Slow down, I'm okay.”

Finch barreled through a stop signto make the tight turn onto the service road that ran along the back of the warehouse district. Just barely lifting his foot off the gas, he cruised past loading dock after loading dock until finally, caught in the bright glare of the headlights, Reese limped into view. Police sirens howled in the distance. Finch slowed the car and unlocked the doors and Reese to climbed in.

“Do you need medical attention?” Finch asked, his eyes darting from John's slumped shoulders, to the road, and back as he drove away, anxious to put distance between themselves and the rapidly approaching squad cars.

“Maybe. I really need a hot shower and a soft bed. I can't say the same for Warnecki and his crew.”

“Are they -”

“Alive.” Reese groaned as he sank back into the headrest.

“Hmm.” Finch guided the town car out of the rundown industrial district and back to civilization, back to one of the many safe houses he kept in the city. John was quiet as Finch pulled into an underground parking garage. He leaned heavily against the elevator wall as they ascended to a top floor apartment where Finch punched in a door code and led him inside.

“If something ever happened to you how would I know about all these bolt holes, Finch?” John asked, carefully peeling out of his jacket, wincing as he pulled it free.

“I've made provisions for that,” Finch answered, taking the jacket and beginning his physical inspection. John's white shirt was cut to ribbons and stained red from elbow to cuff. Harold ran his fingertips over the ruined Egyptian cotton, the fabric was already stiffening without a steady supply of John's blood.

There were no other blood stains, just the grime of the warehouse and a missing button. “The bath is down the hall. Get cleaned up and then I'll take a closer look.”

“I'm fine, Harold,” John said, holding his right arm away from his body while plucking open his remaining shirt buttons. “It's not a deep cut.”

Harold held the suit jacket to his chest as John shambled out of the room to the bath. After all of this time he knew he should be used to the fallout that came with working the numbers but it was still disconcerting to see just how hard a physical toll the work took on John. Harold waited there in the living room until he finally heard the muffled rush of the shower. Then he made his way across the room and down the hallway, past the closed bathroom door to his own room.

He hadn't used this particular house in a long time. The truth was, the neighborhood was a little rough for his liking, thanks to gentrification of the surrounding area. And the nearest subway station was sixteen long blocks away, making this house inconvenient for most field work. Every week a service came by and dusted the place down, opened the windows to air it out, changed the linens and kept the pantry stocked with canned and dry goods. Harold used to keep all of his houses supplied with a small cache of fresh milk, eggs, cheese and bread, only to have the service throw it all away at the end of the week because there was no way he could visit all of his properties before the food went bad. So now he kept these farther flung outposts outfitted with only the necessities.

He pulled the medical kit out of the closet and prepped his tools: gloves, gauze pads, tape, antibiotic ointment, suture kit, aspirin and a glass of water. While he prepared himself for a grisly game of doctor his phone chirped. He spent the next few minutes listening to Detective Carter's graphic recap of the warehouse scene. John's quip earlier, about leaving them alive, could now be put in context.

“Thank you, Detective. I've emailed everything that I have on our Mr. Warnecki. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.”

The shower had stopped by the time he disconnected the call. Harold went back to the hallway just as Mr. Reese emerged from his long shower. His discarded suit in his arms as he hobbled out of the bathroom, a white towel knotted low across his hips. The younger man had managed to towel dry his hair somewhat and, now free of the usual heavy gel, it spiked and curled in a series of messy tufts. He had obviously given up on anything below the waist, fat droplets of water plastered his dark hair to his lower legs. And then there were the bruises, already formed and sharp against his skin.

His lips pressed tight, Harold took the bundle of clothes before leading the way to the master bedroom, John's wet feet slapping against the hardwood floor.

“Detective Carter checked in,” Harold said, dropping John's suit into a plastic bag with the jacket. “It seems Mr. Warnecki was reluctant to explain just how he and his seven associates ended up on the losing end of an all out shooting match.”

John limped over to the cherry wood dresser chest, grinning.

“John, this is serious. Eight men! You could have been killed.”

“But I wasn't,” he said as he pulled out a pair of black, soft cotton boxer briefs.

Harold wheeled on him, his fists on his hips. “And the next time?”

“Can we... Can we save this for morning, Harold?” John asked as he dropped down on the edge of the bed. “You can reprimand me about reckless risk taking all you want— after I get a cup of coffee in me.” He lifted his arm out to Harold. “Right now, I just need some gauze.”

Harold rolled his eyes – but the lecture was tabled. He took John's arm in his hands and ran his fingers along the four inch long cut. The edges were already knitting together. “You're right, it's not deep, but I'll wrap it just the same.” He moved his fingers lightly over John's body, skimming the perimeter of the angry red scrapes on the younger man's shoulder blade. Lingering.

“I took a shortcut down a flight of stairs,” John said in answer.

“The limp?” Harold ask, drawing back, his arms crossed over his vest front.

“Muscle cramp.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

Harold rolled the medical cart to the foot of the bed and dug through the meds for one of his muscle relaxers He snapped the pill in half, dumping one half back into the paper wrapper before giving John the other along with the water. John grimaced but he swallowed it, along with the two aspirin Harold dropped into his hand next. Satisfied, Harold set to work wrapping John's arm with clinical detachment. Massaging a thin layer of ointment over the swollen red mess of scraped skin. It would be tender to the touch for the next few days until the skin scabbed over.

John dropped his chin and let Harold patch him up. He was still in the bath towel, his nightwear, the boxers, laying next to him.

“Do you need help getting dressed?” Harold asked when he was finished and snapping off the nitrile gloves.

“I'm fine, Harold,” John said quietly.

The older man nodded. John wasn't giving up anything more. This was normal, after the adrenaline wore off, when the ex-operative finally found his way back home. Harold left John to navigate the towel on his own while he cleaned up. The medical waste and the bloodied suit were double bagged and set by the door. Harold would dispose of it all by fire later.

When he returned, the towel lay on the carpet and John was awkwardly sliding under the sheets.

“I checked, I have coffee.” Harold said as he closed the bedroom door.

“Mmhm,” John murmured, curling himself under the sheets facing Harold, watching Harold undress, slip into his blue silk pajamas. Stiffly holding the sheets back as Harold slid in beside him.

“I'm sorry.” John said as he lay his damp head on Harold's chest.

“There's nothing to apologize for,” Harold said, resting his hand on John's back.

 

◦◦◦

 

John slept well into the morning, his bandaged arm flung over Harold, the other cradled under his head. Carefully, Harold groped along the nightstand for his glasses. A hot shower and soft bed seemed to have done wonders for John. His normally drawn face was relaxed. The dressing on his arm was still clean and his abraded upper back had improved from the angry red of last night into a still swollen but now pinkish patch of skin.

In the beginning, Harold would have fretted over the injuries and insisted on John seeing one of his retained doctors for a full examination. He spent their first few months together fretting and insisting, and John went on cleaning his own bullet wounds and splinting his own broken fingers. And then there was the day John came back to the library after a run in with the business end of a garden trowel and the only logical option was for Harold to drag out the first-aid box and get to sewing. Stitches were easy, once Harold got past the difference in texture between an expanse of warm, bleeding flesh and a bolt of fine suit wool. Once he was able to build for himself a clear distinction between stitching up an injured employee and knowing that he was the direct cause of the abuse John put his body through.

And then there were moments like this, John unguarded, his warm weight bearing down on him, when that distinction was harder to maintain.

Harold savored the moment.

John jerked awake with a throaty howl of pain.

Grunting, he dragged himself to the edge of the bed and gingerly extended his left leg down to the floor. “Charley horse,” he spat out.

Harold pushed himself up on his elbows and levered himself out of bed. “Just keep stretching it,” he said, tottering around to the other side. He placed one hand on John's hip, the other on the back of his thigh. “That's it, nice and slow,” he murmured while John held the deep stretch. After a while John brought his feet together and straightened up.

“I guess I'm awake now,” he said as he tested his weight on his sore leg. “I'm going to hit the latrine.” John took a tentative step. “You might as well get that coffee brewing.”

“The coffee can hold,” Harold said. “Come back to bed when you're finished. I'll work on that leg.”

John nodded and set off for the toilet, favoring his left leg.

Harold stripped off the blanket and top sheet to create a make-shift massage table. He wasn't sure if there was oil in the kitchen pantry, and even if there was, if it would be something usable like grape seed or coconut, or, more likely and less useful, olive oil.

“Ah,” Harold said. On a whim he'd had all of the houses stocked with the same cherry almond hand lotion he kept at the office. For dry hands, of course.

And John.

Harold checked the top drawer of John's nightstand and came up empty. He had better luck when he looked on his side of the bed. He unlocked the pump spout and placed the lotion at the ready, then he retrieved the other half of the muscle relaxer.

John was back now, still keeping most of his weight on his right foot. Carefully, as not to aggravate the sore calf muscle, he climbed onto the stripped mattress, face down, toes pointed.

“Try to relax. Nature calls, I'll be back in a moment.” This wasn't how he had imagined spending the morning— jolted out of a warm bed and pressed back into medical service. When Harold returned, John was still lying on his stomach, his head resting on his folded arms, slowly bending his knee then stretching his leg back down to the mattress, rucking the leg of his boxer briefs up higher on his left thigh.

“I wouldn't call this a ringing endorsement for all the time you spend on your yoga mat,” Harold said as he picked up the lotion and positioned himself at the foot of the bed, catching John's calf and guiding it down flat. “Lie still.” Harold took the time to appreciate the long lines of the man reclined on the bed. Dark, sleep-mussed hair and the broad expanse of his pale back, the skin embellished with a lifetime of raised white combat scars and more recent wounds.

Harold leaned in and skimmed his open hands just above the surface of John's skin, moving down his back to the soft padding at his waist, over the dark briefs and firm thighs, teasing up the fine hairs that dusted his lower legs. Harold pumped out a dollop of scented lotion, warmed it between his hands then started at John's left foot.

In the months following the ferry accident, Harold had become intimately familiar with the power of massage to ease his post-operative pain. Later, John had used some of those same techniques on him, to hone is own intimate sense of Harold's body. He took a second to recall the main components that went into a John-level massage. He started with firm strokes along the sole of John's foot, increasing the pressure as he worked up to the heel and then reversing back down, rubbing his thumbs through John's arch and down to his toes. Harold gave each one a gentle pull, massaging the bases with his thumb and finishing off by threading his lotion slick fingers between them all at once.

John flexed his toes back and groaned. Harold took that as a good sign as he continued up to John's ankle. He used both hands to stroke circles over the bone, to squeeze and push the heel and ankle around the Achilles's tendon, then, lift John's foot from the mattress and rotate it slowly, first to the left, then the right.

Harold moved up John's leg, barely touching him with the light upward strokes, progressing from there by molding his hands around the long muscle and lightly drawing his way up. This elicited another low groan from the prone man. Harold added more lotion then pressed his thumbs together to apply a slow, steady stroke up the center of the knotted calf muscle. John gasped but kept still as Harold maintained the pressure all the way up to the back of his knee before feathering his fingertips back down to John's ankle and repeating the move. The tight muscles were slowly loosening under his touch.

“You should do this more often,” John murmured.

“Would you like that?” Harold asked, brushing the back of his hand up John's inner thigh.

“Yes.”

“You should have said something sooner,” Harold said, circling the heels of his hands over the back of John's thigh.

“I figured you had one of your private reasons for only giving back rubs.”

“Only that you never asked for more.”

For the next thirty minutes Harold moved up the length of both of John's legs, alternating his touch between the long sweeps over John's skin, gliding strokes with the slightest of pressure, and slow kneading to break up the muscle tension. Easing breaks in for himself to shift his position or stretch his own arms and legs. Eventually he made his way to the bottom hem of the briefs and decided he'd have an easier go at John without them in his way. He cupped his hands over John's cotton clad ass and tucked his fingers under the waistband. He tugged gently then paused, puzzled for a moment when the soft fabric didn't peel down easily over John's lean hips.

“I think you're enjoying this a little too much.” Harold slipped a hand underneath John guiding him to arch his hips slightly so that Harold could pull the briefs down and over John's erection and off. “This is supposed to be therapeutic massage, John.”

“And it has been. I'm feeling a lot better already,” John answered in a drowsy rasp. “Keep going.”

For Harold, at least, the massage was still a curative. Mostly a curative. He worked the deep tissues of John's glutes then eased his way over the iliac crest to the obliques, the lats, paying attention to the throaty sounds John made along the way, the way the man's body sank deeper down into the bed.

Harold used the pads of his fingers to massage John's neck, thumbing an outline over the dark “V” at his nape before stretching his fingers out through John's soft hair and massaging his warm scalp.

He finished off with a kiss to the top of John's head. “Better?”

“Not quite,” John murmured, his dark lashes fluttering as he opened his eyes.

“You need the front too?” Harold asks, sighing from the side of the bed, flexing his tired hands.

“Not all of it. The leg is a thousand times better. I banged myself up pretty hard on the staircase last night.”

“I–,” Harold stopped short. There was no point in resuming last night's conversation.

“Thank you.” John said.

“What else can I do for you, John?”

The corners of John's lips quirked up into a sly smile before he pushed himself up from the bed to roll onto his back. He tilted his head slightly, drawing Harold's attention, unnecessarily, back down to his erection. He lifted his brows and offered Harold a sheepish smile. “Finish me off?”

“Would that aid in your recovery?” Harold asked patiently.

“Immeasurably.”

Harold arched a brow and made a show of interlocking his fingers together, palms out, and stretching his arms out in front of his body.

“Interesting,” Harold said, tracing his fingers along the under seam of John's cock. “I don't recall ever getting this extra service with my massages.”

“That's because you have freakishly good body control,” John gasped out.

“Hmm.” Harold pumped a generous amount of lotion in his palm and took his time warming it. “I suppose that's because I'm genuinely in...discomfort when you make your offers.”

“That leg cramp wasn't a ruse, Harold.”

“I didn't mean to suggest that it was.” He closed his fingers around the base of John's cock then pulled up slowly, using the same light touch he'd used earlier. John closed his eyes, his mouth curving into a smile when Harold reached the sensitive tip then slid a firm hand back down.

“I only meant that... the nature of our relationship is complicated enough,” Harold continued, speeding up his strokes and watchingJohn's face for the play of his parted lips and furrowed brow. “Your willingness to provide the occasional rubdown is a kindness that I never wanted to confuse with our more personal activities.”

His eyes still closed and color rising on his high cheekbones, John dropped his hand down to cup his balls close to his body while Harold jerked him off. “It's all the same thing, Harold. You, me, the numbers, the sex, I don't separate one part of my life with you from the other,” John said, his breath catching as Harold brushed his down stroking fingers against John's inner wrist.

John came with a muffled cry and Harold loosened his grip slightly, holding his cock lightly through the pulse and spurt of the orgasm. His hand was warm and damp with John's come and Harold pulled off to smooth the seed through John's dark pubic hair while gently massaging his other hand over his thigh.

John was a study in vulnerability: legs sprawled open, head thrown back, body slack except for his heaving chest, and a loopy, self satisfied smile curving his lips.

Harold leaned down to claim a kiss, without distinction or separation.


End file.
